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The “Fifty Shades of Grey” film has racked up more than $130 million in domestic box office receipts in two-and-a-half weeks. And critics have had a fine time indulging in literary masochism by reading through the source material, the bondage homage book by E.L. James. But three years ago, there was just the book (and its two sequels), and author E.L. James made Chicago one of her few promotional stops on a quickie book tour. It happened at a downtown club, and it drew a paying audience of more than 400, almost all of them women. Here, from May 2, 2012, is my account of attending that event and interviewing James: The "E L," it is safe to assume, does not stand...

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The “Fifty Shades of Grey” film has racked up more than $130 million in domestic box office receipts in two-and-a-half weeks. And critics have had a fine time indulging in literary masochism by reading through the source material, the bondage homage...

In Veronica Roth's young adult trilogy of best-selling futuristic hellholes, being a "divergent" means you avoid easy categorization and defy the crushing dictates of your overseers.
The movie version of "Divergent" is no divergent....

Who I am
Anna Heinemann from Oak Park.
I liked
"Shiver" by Maggie Stiefvater, "Graceling" by Kristin Cashore, "Cinder" by Marissa Meyer and "Code Name Verity" by Elizabeth Wein.
This piece first ran in...

About a month ago I quit Amazon cold turkey, and I feel great.
I have bought nothing from Amazon since May 16. Not a book, not a DVD, not an MP3. After years of purchasing pop culture from the mega e-retailer at an embarrassing pace — even as I was...

"Poets die adolescents," Robert Lowell wrote, and it's supposed to be romantic. Personally I think it sounds like hell. Just imagine: never growing out of your teenage rawness to the world, your pathological vulnerability to insults and...

Midway through my conversation with Imagine Dragons lead singer Dan Reynolds and his wife, Aja Volkman, in Nellcote's private dining area last week, Volkman — whose band, Nico Vega, opened for Imagine Dragons earlier that night at the House of Blues —...

David Otunga had little time to order food Friday during lunchtime at Howells & Hood in the Tribune Tower — not with his hectic press tour running late and a live TV appearance up next — so the Elgin native and WWE Superstar settled for just a drink....

In the midst of separating a generation of young female readers into Team Edward and Team Jacob, Stephenie Meyer, author of the wildly popular "Twilight" novels, started a new book called "The Host." Published by Little, Brown in 2008,...

"The Host" is for people who couldn't handle the whirlwind pace of events in the "Twilight" trilogy and who prefer a love triangle unafraid to redefine, for a new generation, the word "lollygag."
It features several shots of...

Like modern fantasy authors from Lewis Carroll, George MacDonald and C. S. Lewis to Gene Wolfe and John Crowley, Neil Gaiman writes about the worlds on the edges of this one -- just off the map, a bit to the left, inaccessible without the right...

In 1976, D. Carleton Gadjusek was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for proving the link between a slow-acting prion disease that caused madness and death in the Fore tribe in Papua New Guinea and the tribe’s funerary ritual of eating deceased members...

Eight years ago, novelist Shannon Hale read an interview with a writer who was on the verge of publishing her first book.
“Ohhh,” Hale sighed sympathetically. “It doesn’t sound like she has writer friends.”
This piece first ran in Printers Row...

Lizzie Skurnick wants to nudge several new titles into the literary canon.
On the shelf not too far from "A Separate Peace," by John Knowles, she'd place Brenda Scott Wilkinson's "Ludell." In sight of John Steinbeck's "The Red...

The book was great — until the ending ruined it!What reader hasn't thought this? The feelings can be even harder if we're talking about the ending of a series. Just check out the (as of this writing) more than 1,700 one- and two-star reviews of the...

I'm usually reading four or five books at a time. At the moment, I'm in the middle of Husain Haddawy's enchanting translation of “The Arabian Nights” (forget Cervantes and Sterne — this is where postmodernism begins); Jean-Luc Marion's...

This is a book club of young women and men in the northern suburbs who share three things: the love of reading, a strong friendship and a cognitive disability. It's inspiring to see the Book Wizards book club in Libertyville intelligently discussing...

You can watch the "Twilight" movies and read the books, but why stop there?
Thousands of Americans are giving their babies "Twilight"-related names.
Bella, the name of the love-struck heroine of Stephenie Meyer's vampire novels,...

One thing to know about our club:Our husbands or fiances were all in a fraternity together at the University of Illinois. We started Intellectu-Gals as a pseudo-excuse to get together, chat and enjoy good food and wine. The enjoying good food and...

One thing to know about our book club: Our book club is composed of students who attend Lake View High School and live in all areas of the city. One of the things that bring all of our members together is that we love to read. We have about 20...

Teen sci-fi should rule the box office this weekend, with the highly anticipated "Divergent" poised for a strong launch of a new franchise.
"Divergent," from Lionsgate's Summit Entertainment, could generate $55 million or...